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WOW! In the family all those years, extra special for sure! I love to hear stories like that. So you grew up with antique cars in your blood too!? I was a young guy when Dad bought our 1920 Overland in running condition and a bit later he bought the Whippet as a project. What you see is a 28 year amateur restoration. He will be 90 this May and enjoys when I get him out for a ride. I'm sure your father was looking down on you the day you got the car & Mom out for that ride. You have my deepest sympathies for your loss. I'd love to see more pictures of the car up close. It's really hard to believe Overland was 2nd only to the Model T once and yet most people (outside of the antique car culture) don't even know what an Overland is.

A last minute thought for you.... Maybe Mrs Shadetree can get a couple of tickets at work for you two to go and see the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Hall on till next Sunday. It is quite the event and have many interesting concept cars too. Just one of MANY things around here to see & do.

Robert, You have my best wishes for a safe and uneventful trip also! If you get this before you leave, I'm going to sound like your Mom here but, don't be afraid to throw an extra sweater or hoodie in the car with you. I can guarantee this bitter cold will hit you coming out from your nice warm car when you get here! My sister moved to the Gatlinburg, Tn area 18 years ago and the last time she was here she did nothing but complain about the cold and that was in early October! Her blood has thinned a lot! Lastly, once you hit Cincinnati it is about 5 hours to Detroit in good weather. You should be able to see the Ambassador Bridge using I-75 on your way to your new home. I'm about 6 miles east of that bridge in Canada so hope to meet you and Mrs Shadetree someday as I have relatives in Waterford. All the very best to you & yours!

Hi. Believe me when I say I understand about the emotion / memories of DAD and the car in the family, especially an Overland! Truly happy for you, your Mom and the car that you were able to enjoy the ride together! Please post more pictures as you all enjoy the rides & memories. My Dad's Overland Whippet

To this day I'm always amazed at people that consider a car just a means of transportation and disposable. Dad always bought used cars with high mileage and was able to get many dependable miles out of the engines by changing the oil himself about every two thousand miles with new oil filters each time. Even my old Limited, with a can of STP every so often, I logged another 45,000 miles on it simply because it had been taken care of. That motor today has about 145,000 miles on it since it survives in my Special and has never been apart.

With the more than usual snow fall this year and the unusually cold temperatures, not going to get much done outside so..... Went into the garage looking for some front inner fender panels that I can take over to Dads heated garage to cleanup and paint. However, had to move a bunch of stuff piled near the good Limited where I thought they would be. Thought I'd tease you with this. I say tease because you can only see the firewall and frame behind my almost ready to swap out Ford Flathead in my '52.

It's now 2006 and I have been traveling around locally with no real issues accept noticing when I put my foot into it a bit more than usual there is some smoke coming out of both dual exhaust pipes. About every 2nd tank of gas she needs almost a liter of oil but sounds good and performing fine. I decided to go with a group to a car show in Bothwell Ontario that August which is about 70 miles one way but a great show with well over 1000 cars when the weather is good. It is sponsored by Old Autos magazine and has had a 50/50 draw reach as high as $20,000.00 each way once! I load up the truck with a few essentials including a case of oil since I figured she might be going to use just a bit.... Fifty miles out the gang has to make a pit stop and I take the opportunity to check the oil. Sure enough, she needs a liter. Topped up we arrive with no issues, set up shade tents for the girls and go off through the swap meet. When I came back I found two guys waiting for me and want to talk about the truck. They told me that it had been their Dad's truck when they were young kids and used to go down the side roads with him at the wheel collecting pop bottles from the sides of the road and the ditches on weekends for extra money. I spent about an hour with them while they talked about some of the abuse it went through from their oldest brother who I bought it from. When I told them it had used a liter of oil coming to the show, one of them asked if I had done anything with the motor? They were shocked to hear me say that all I did was a complete tune up and a couple of oil changes in the two years I owned it! They remembered their Dad always complaining about having to fill that D@$%@ thing up. (Maybe that was why they were looking to cash in those pop bottles?) Oh, and how did they recognize it as their truck? By the red trim of course and the rims that the brother talked their Dad into putting on. When time to head home I checked the oil again to find it needed just a bit and topped it off. I told the group that I needed to check it again about half way and when we stopped it took another whole liter! Still never missing a beat or showing signs of overheating we made it home but before I put it away don't I need to put in another liter! Essentially I did a complete oil change while on the road! That old flathead is going to need some attention......

I sent you another email Jan 13, 2014 concerning additional parts from the address you sent.

Can anyone suggest where or what to use for the windshield post rubber / material at the body? Dad had a guy redo the top who decided to repaint the posts without talking to him first. He took them off the car destroying the original material, threw it out and put this crap on. I'd like to change it out to something more appropriate. Any suggestions / leads? Thanks.

With the mechanical repairs made properly and having gained my confidence in it's reliability the next several years were spent just enjoying driving her when ever I could to as many events as I could! It was never my intention to do a body off restoration or front clip V8 kind of thing but by doing little things like chroming the front hood piece, new re-pop V8 emblem, new F O R D letters, polishing up the hood side trim, SS headlight rings, running board step plates, sanding and repainting the bumpers and new interior headliner boards sure helped the general overall looks. However, those front fenders were constantly staring back at me with all the bondo and cracks in them! After a few helpful (?) suggestions from other Ford truck owners, I decided to buy fiberglass fenders, running boards and a sun visor from a manufacturer here in Ontario and scout out a local shop to do the work over one winter. That proved to be discouraging as two of the shops basically said they would never do fiberglass fenders again as they don't ever fit right, sometimes develop cracks and just require too much work to get it right. In the mean time, while attending a Buick sponsored Swap Meet, what do I find out in the parking lot? There on the ground were two used steel front fenders and a lower front valance in nice shape! Fifty bucks later, they're mine! Anyone want to buy a pair of fiberglass fenders for a 51 / 52 Ford F1 truck?

OH MY Rob! For what it is worth (and that's not much), glad to see I'm not the only one with that "two steps forward and one step backwards" thing with anything connected to working on the cars... Good luck and...... patients.

Thank you for your reply. I've sent you an email today Jan 10/14

Hello Tom, While I personally have never loaned one of my cars to a Museum for display I do belong to a Car Club that now owns (yes owns / no mortgage) and operates a Museum & Heritage Village with a 25,000 square foot Museum Building for car & transportation display which has some vehicles and artifacts that have been loaned to us. Obviously you have a Museum in mind for your car and my question to you is, "How well do you know that Museum and their policies and procedures?" Consider this, when you or I take our cars to a show, we are usually close by and able watch them. At the end of the day we bring them home and put them in the locked garage for the night or till the next show with the knowledge things are fine. In a Museum the cars are in view of the general public during it's operating hours and without tour guides it would surprise you the number of people that do not consider that rope any sort of a barrier. In our Museum that policy & procedure made a change which included video surveillance. Not to scare you off here but the point is to check and double check how things run and do a "what if" with them. For instance, extreme worst case scenario, you pass away (God forbid). How would your family retrieve your car if you committed (in writing) to a specific time frame? OR... you've placed the car there and now you have a buyer, can you take it out on short notice? At the very least I, like you I'm sure, want to sleep at night knowing my baby is in good hands. We currently have the seven passenger Packard that was filmed in the Lindberg Story on display and it truly adds to the quality of the Museum experience as I'm sure your Reatta would too but it did not come to us without certain conditions and understandings. Just my two cents worth. I'm sure others will offer more.

Oh.... and here is the before shot with boat anchor under cover!

While enjoying driving around to the various Cruise-ins locally my next effort was to address the box. Remember I said that when I first looked at it there were two engines in the box? He kept the one motor and reduced the price when I pointed out that it had no carb on it and I could see that water had gone inside the intake. Wished I'd have taken that one as.... the one I kept, while having a carb on it, had as much exposure to it and more, hence being nothing more than a boat anchor! With those two motors sitting there and no real care having taken place there was a lot of oil that had leaked or came from other sources and while the wood was solid it none the less would not clean up like new. I decided to degrease it as much as possible, sand out the rough places and stain it with a dark wood stain and varnish for now. Without taking off the steel floor rails I sanded and painted them before staining the wood. Before all this I started with sanding and painting (again with that Tremclad White and by brush) the top rails and interior metal walls including the inside of the tailgate. Soon after this was completed I decided I wanted a toneau cover to protect what I had done and be able to keep things out of view when attending car shows. I have seen various methods / designs on many trucks over the years and my choice was to not have one that went completely over the side bed rails. That left me with the question of how to attach it inside the box. I came up with the idea of lining the walls with 3/4 inch plywood, staining it with semi transparent stain and having a 1x2 wood top rail where snaps would go on the very top keeping it below the slanted side rails. The local Upholstery Shop was willing to custom fit a vinyl cover once I had everything in place for a very reasonable price. It was made out of a material that is used in the trucking industry on trailers that have the sides made to roll up out of the way. It remains flexible, wipes up nicely and has weathered well. Not a really clear shot of the stained sides and wood floor. Note the dented right fender. Could have pounded it out some but painted it with Tremclad as is for now. (It does make for some conversation or comments)

whtbaron, Now that's coool eh? (pun intended)

Hello Jim! "(Read you posts and glad that you just had a tong-depressor, and not the big one!)" Times 10 on that! Sure gets one to thinking though..... All is back to normal, as normal as that was/is for me - ha ha. I'm guessing by that last storm you might have received even more snow than we did here? For once the forecasters were pretty right on this time. Any chance there might be another spring swap meet near you sometime? Wishing you safe travels.

Interesting winter indeed for a lot of us John. Today's Windsor Star headline read, "Windsor, colder than the South Pole". So far we have just about reached our annual yearly snow fall total and this from the southern most region of Canada which by the way, is along the same parallel as the northern border of California! I can only remember two other times we had snow dumped here and enough to shut things down for two days. This time is was deep enough that my truck literally plowed snow in front of the bumper. I had no where to park safely on the side of the road to unload the snow blower. I won't be getting to my project for a few weeks(?) yet............

The 1st week of 2014 and our third snow fall this winter dumping 11 inches on everything this last time! From the Southern most region in Canada. (the north shore of Lake Erie in lower than the northern border of California) BELATED HAPPY NEW YEARS TO EVERYONE!

2014 Starts with this! At the end of the Storm at 6:30am = 11 inches and COLD -14 degrees. You know you have too much snow when you have to dig out the Blower IN your pick-up first!

Ken, both my Limited's and Roadmaster have single four barrel Rochester carbs and my Special has a single two barrel Carter. I have seen a few nailhead engines with tri-power setups but in those cases it was by the efforts of the owners additions and not as optioned from the factory. I know there were some '55 Old tri-power setups but 1958 Buick's didn't offer them to my knowledge.

Since my work is seasonal I was able to occupy my time from January through March finishing up the cab interior more before putting the redone seat back in and spent many hours rubbing out the paint with compound by hand and then more hours polishing (again by hand). The many marks in the paint needed to be touched up as I wasn't prepared to do any major body / paint job since the front fenders were full of bondo! I just new they would more than likely need to be replaced so did what little on them that needed to be done for now. What I found after some trial samples of white paint was that Tremclad White was a perfect match! With a bit of thinner on a long haired brush, dipping it in the paint can I was able to get a fairly presentable look. With a bit of wet sanding and then more polishing I was able to blend the new with the old somewhat. There were more hours spent on cleaning up the rims with SOS pads and lots of liquid chrome cleaner. By April and the streets free of salt residue I was ready for the car (truck) season.

I sent you an email regarding a part on the '58 Roadmaster yesterday Jan 4, 2014.

Hey.... I guess I have one too! 1989 Mercury Cougar. Although not my everyday driver. I inherited it from the original owner with only 42,000 kms (25,200 miles) Kinda hard to believe it's that vintage now......

Back to the truck. I had no insulation or heat in the garage but was so determined to clean things up that winter that I rigged up a temporary frame, covered it loosely with plastic and used an electric heater while working there. Wasn't too bad for the small things I was doing. As mentioned, the seat was at the upholstery shop who gave me a price to totally redo the frame, including repair the springs, paint and do a stitched pattern that copied the pattern left by those seat covers. I have been in a few cars with seats that had that smooth non pleated look before and didn't like sliding around in them so knowing the truck rode like a truck and no seat belts, had a pattern sewn in. With Xmas and New Years over and the tree put away what better place to have a part of my new toy than in front of the fireplace! It wasn't there too long as I'm still married to the same girl...... In the mean time other things were in the works. Seems I had more energy (and money) then.....